This is the true story of Lassie, the wild border collie born in a fox earth. At the time of her rescue by the RSPC in November 1953, a full-grown red fox was seen to dart from the same earth Lassie shared with her stray collie mother. She had many fox features, such as a striking red coat, bushy tail and fox-like traits. So was Lassie a dog - or a fox-dog cross?

After almost sixty years, her eventful life is now told for the first time. John Roberts Warren, then a schoolboy, whose dog she became, and whose dedication and love brought her back from the wild, raised her on his father's East Cheshire smallholding.

But throughout her colourful life, and the life of her unique twin pups, Teddy and Lynne, also born in a fox earth and of possible fox parentage, Lassie remained to the outside world a wild creature. Zoologists and science journalists who came to visit her were largely sceptical, but the possibility she was a fox-dog cross is ably supported by John Roberts Warren's story and the latest research into crossbreeding in the dog/wolf family.

His account also tells of how the distrust of a wild creature for man was overcome, and how apparent difference can be compensated for. John Robert Warren's text and wildlife artist Philip Snow's illustrations vividly evoke life in the farming countryside of East Cheshire from the 1930's to the 1950's.